- Coming up on "American Black Journal," award-winning poet and author, Kwame Alexander, is here to talk about his literary works and his mission to change the world one word at a time, plus it's time for Bookstock, the area's largest used book and media sale.

We will have all the details.

Stay where you are.

"American Black Journal" starts right now.

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Thank you.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to "American Black Journal."

I'm your host, Stephen Henderson.

My first guest is an award-winning author, poet, producer, and educator, a real Renaissance man in the literal sense.

Kwame Alexander is the New York Times bestselling author of 44 books, including "The Crossover," "The Undefeated," "How Sweet the Sound," and "The Door of No Return."

His writings include poetry, stories for young people, and books about African American trailblazers.

I am really pleased to welcome Kwame Alexander to "American Black Journal."

It is great to have you here.

- It's great to be here.

- (chuckles) It's great to have you take time out from writing books (chuckles) to sit and talk about writing books, because, at the pace you're going, I mean, I just can't imagine you have time for anything else, and somehow you've managed to squeeze all these other things in too.

- Well, you know, what's interesting is I love talking.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

(chuckles) - I began my career as an actor.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- Like that's where I started and, at a place called Virginia Tech, and I auditioned for plays and didn't get cast, (Stephen chuckles) and I said, "Okay, well, I gotta figure this out."

And so I began writing plays to cast myself.

- Right.

(chuckles) - So the writing happened as a result of that.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, 44 books, I mean, that is an incredible number.

Prolific is the word that keeps coming to mind, but there are also, the range of things that you're writing about is really broad.

Talk about how you get inspiration for these books, and for each one, what's the thing you're trying to accomplish with it?

- I think, ultimately, as Langston Hughes said, "I'm trying to distill my human heart into a few words on the page."

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- And sometimes, that heart is filled with longing and love, and so a love story or a love poem might come out.

Other times, it's my two-year-old who won't stop crying.

And so I play some jazz music, and she stops crying, and so I say, "Well, let me write a book about Duck Ellington and Mules Davis, and teach her about jazz."

So it really is about what I'm feeling, what I'm experiencing, what I'm thinking, when I'm dealing with sort of the woes and the wonders of life.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- And it comes out in various ways.

- Yeah, let's talk about the difference between writing poetry and writing stories.

- Sure.

- I think of poetry as, you know, of course, more subject to rhythm and pacing and the kind of things that you see in music- - Sure.

- More often, and of course, stories can do that too.

- Right.

- But it's a very different process.

- Oh, absolutely, I mean, you think about it like this.

With prose, you have a lot of words at your disposal.

- Yes.

- You know?

- You can go on as long as you want.

- With poetry... - [Stephen] Yeah.

- You have to capture sort of the heavy things that are happening in just a few words, and so it requires more conciseness, and so if you look at a page of poetry versus prose, there's more white space on the poetry page.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- And I believe that's so that the reader can take that spiritual journey.

It's not just about the words that are there, but it's about the words that aren't there, that sort of challenge us and make us pay attention to what's happening in our lives and the world.

- That's an interesting way to think about that.

I've always thought that the best music often is about the notes that aren't there.

- Right.

- Miles, in particular.

- Exactly.

- Right?

You don't have to play every note.

Some of them are understood.

I guess poetry is the same.

- I mean, look, you could tell, and I did, I told a woman that I loved her, you know, over and over, and she didn't really pay attention.

I wasn't very cool.

I didn't get cool till very recently.

- Then show her.

(chuckles) - And so I recited a poem to her.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- I have never been a slave, yet I know I am whipped.

I have never been to Canada, yet I hope to cross your border.

I have never traveled underground, yet the night knows my journey.

If I were a poet in love, I say that, with you, I have found that new place, where romance is just the beginning, and freedom is our end.

- [Stephen] Oh.

- And she married me.

- [Stephen] Oh, there you go.

(laughs) - So... - There you go.

It worked.

- The poetry works.

- Right, it worked.

So, I also am curious these days with everybody who's a writer or an artist, artistic person of any kind.

- Sure.

- What the world and the state of the world is saying to you about the work.

I mean, I think that as writers, of course, we're always influenced by everything from the outside.

- Yeah.

- What's the world telling you?

What's the world telling you to do?

What's the world telling you to be interested in right now?

- Well, I think, like most human beings, we are scared, we are confused, we find ourselves in the midst of chaos, not sure how we're going to survive, but when we think back to the history of, in particular, Black Americans and how we got over it.

- [Stephen] It's always been that way.

- It's always been that way.

And you gotta imagine that, you know, in a slave ship, and you've got, you know, people in the bottom of a ship, head-to-toe in the hold of a ship, packed together, from Sierra Leone, Mende from Ghana, Ashanti from Nigeria, Igbo and Yoruba, and so, how do they communicate when they have different languages?

And you gotta imagine, Stephen, that at some point, there was a hum.

- Yeah.

- (hums) And somebody began to sing a song, and it was these words and this music, and this harmony and this melody that got, that helped us get over, that helped us keep the faith.

- Yeah.

- And I posit that the words and the songs and the visual melody does that for us.

It allows us to be able to deal with the woes and the wonders of the world.

It allows us to be able to capture it, to question it, and, ultimately, I think, as Toni Morrison showed us, as James Baldwin showed us, as Nikki Giovanni showed us, it can help us resist, it can help us find the words to resist, and if you want it to become something, you gotta say it.

- Yeah, yeah, you know, fear is an interesting motivator.

I always feel like, sometimes, it inspires the best work, which is a dark way to think about it, but it does.

I mean, that sense of urgency, that sense of impending harm or doom, I think, pushes artists inward in a way that produces these unbelievable things.

For me, maybe that's a silver lining for right now, is that the art that'll come out of this period maybe will be inspiring to people in the future.

- That is the hope.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- That is the dream, and you gotta think that, you know, before Nikki Giovanni passed away, we talked about the election and the results of it.

And her comment to me was, "Kwame, we've been here before."

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- "And this too shall pass."

- [Stephen] We can do it.

- And so, when we look back on our history, and we think of a poet like Langston Hughes, "I been scarred and battered.

My hopes the wind done shattered.

Snow has frizzed me, Sun has baked me, I think between 'em they done tried to make me stop laughin', stop lovin', stop livin'.

But I don't care!

I'm still here!"

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- And so these words still inspire almost a hundred years later.

And so I posit, just like you just said, yeah, the idea is that these words, our words, our art, our music, you know, will continue to inspire future generations.

- Yeah.

- That's the goal.

- Yeah.

- Otherwise, the art is fruitless.

- Yeah, yeah, let's talk about your new work, your new book.

- (sighs) The new book, so my dad says, my dad's my biggest fan.

He'll be in the grocery store, "Have you read my son's new book?"

- [Stephen] "Have you seen this?"

- "Have you seen this?

You know he made the New York Times."

(Stephen laughing) (laughs) The latest book is called "How Sweet the Sound."

And it's a picture book that's for ages one to 99.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- And it's about the history of Black music in America.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- And how music from, you know, when we look at the blues... - Which is the history of American music.

- Right, absolutely.

- There isn't a way to separate those things.

- Absolutely.

- That's right.

- When we look at jazz, which is American music, when we look at reggae, at hip hop, and so I wanted to sort of document how we, you know, brought the rhythms and the sounds and the leaps and the bounds from West Africa.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- To the present, how we got here, and look at that sort of journey, and so I wrote that story.

- Who's that story for in your mind?

Who are you writing to in that book?

- You know, I like to think that I am always writing a love letter to Black people, and I am always writing sort of a reminder to all of us.

- To everybody else, yeah.

- To everybody.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- To recognize and acknowledge and appreciate the humanity of Black folks.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- You know, and so, that's my goal.

- Yeah, yeah, I also wanna ask you about one of the kind of fun projects that you have, "Acoustic Rooster."

- "Acoustic Rooster."

- (laughs) I love that, and "Jazzy Jams."

- Which started here in Michigan.

- [Stephen] Is that right?

- In 2010.

- Yeah.

- I had written 10 books of love poems, and I wasn't making a whole lot of money, I wasn't able to provide for my family, so I had jobs.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- And I got a book deal for "Acoustic Rooster's Barnyard Band" from a company in, I wanna say, Grand Rapids.

- Okay, yeah.

- Okay?

- [Stephen] Other side of the state, yeah.

- Called Sleeping Bear Press.

- [Stephen] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

- And they published "Acoustic Rooster," which is about a rooster that started a jazz band with Thelonious Monkey and Ella Finchgerald and Duck Ellington.

(Stephen chuckling) And so that became my first children's book in 2011, and, of course, I've gone on to write many more, but that recently got turned into a cartoon, so it'll be a- - It's on television now.

- [Kwame] Animated special on PBS.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- [Kwame] So that's pretty exciting.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

♪ Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O ♪ - But this is the BeBop Barnyard.

We should sing a jazz song about our farm.

- I know a jazzy rooster who can sing all about our band!

- Yay!

- I mean, you know, the transference of a story like that from page to screen is one of the things that's kind of really fascinating to me.

- Yeah, well, it made sense, because we're writing about music.

- [Stephen] Right.

- Which is in, sort of an auditory experience.

And so how do we then, you know, take these words on the page and put them on the stage?

- Yeah.

- And make that, make them come alive and bring the music out.

I like to think that we're entertaining, but we're also informing.

The biggest metaphor that I can think about when it comes to jazz is that, "Jazz," as Wynton says, "is a metaphor for democracy."

And you've got all these different players, the sax, the drummer, the horn, you know?

You got their piano, you got the singer, and they all gotta exist on stage together to create this musical masterpiece, but at any given point, somebody's gonna solo.

- [Stephen] Right.

- Somebody's gotta shine.

- Someone's in the front.

- And the other people stand back and let them do their thing, because at some point, they know they're gonna have the respect to do their thing, and I think that's a beautiful thing.

- That's a great analogy.

- We're trying to teach kids a lot of these things, I think, through the show.

- Yeah, yeah, so you say your dad is your biggest fan, but I'm imagining that your daughter might be a bigger fan, especially because of things like "Acoustic Rooster."

- Right, right, well, I got two daughters.

- [Stephen] Yeah, yeah.

- I got a 34-year-old and a 16-year-old.

- [Stephen] Okay.

- So I figured I'd try it one more time, see if I can get it right.

- [Stephen] Yeah, right.

- And the 34-year-old just had her first, and her first child, and his name is Langston.

- [Stephen] Oh.

- So I'm old now, I'm a grandfather.

And so I think my daughters have always been primary inspiration for me.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- But now, Stephen, I got a whole new sort of lease on life.

- [Stephen] Ah, right.

- With Langston, who's eight months old.

- [Stephen] Oh my goodness.

- And so, like, I got all kinds of new ideas and inspiration, so when people ask me, "Where do you get inspired?"

It's definitely from the children.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- You know, the mind of an adult begins in the imagination of a child.

- Absolutely, yeah.

All right, Kwame Alexander, it was delightful to have you here in Detroit and on "American Black Journal."

Thanks for coming by.

- Thank you for hosting me.

- Yeah.

And a footnote, you can see Kwame Alexander's recent appearance at the Charles H. Wright Museum on pbsbooks.org.

Coming up next, we'll talk about this year's Bookstock sale, but first, here's a clip from a 1997 "American Black Journal" episode that features the late author, E. Lynn Harris.

- I wanna move right into talking about your phenomenal success, particularly, your first book, "Invisible Life."

An incredible success story, the book was originally self-published.

You took the responsibility of marketing that book and getting it out.

Why is that?

- Well, it was rejected by every publisher I sent it to, including the eventual publisher, Doubleday and Anchor Books, and it was a change of career for me in 1991, and when the rejection letters kept coming, even though I was used to it and having been a salesman, I just didn't like the way it felt in terms of this was something that was personal, something that had come from me, and I felt like there was a market out there, that haven't been the book out, on the market in African American community, like "Invisible Life," and I just felt necessary to get it out there before someone else did it.

- You went through a lot to get the book out.

You invested a lot of your own money in that process as well.

You were in transition, moving from corporate America and trying to make a run at being a published author.

Why the switch?

- Because I'd learned or decided at that point in my life that writing was really my passion.

I wasn't happy with my life, and that included career, personal, and what have you, and then in 1991, I guess the new beginning of the decade, I decided I wanna make some changes, and one of 'em was to have a job that I absolutely love doing.

- Metro Detroit's biggest used book and media sale is back for its 21st year.

Bookstock returns to Laurel Park Place in Livonia for one week, beginning on April 27th.

Nearly 400,000 gently used books, DVDs, CDs, books on tape, and vinyl records are gonna be on sale at bargain prices.

Proceeds benefit literacy and education projects here in the Detroit and the Tri-County area.

There is also an essay contest for fourth graders in the Detroit Public Schools Community District.

Joining me now is the district's deputy superintendent and Bookstock's honorary chancellor, Alycia Meriweather, along with last year's contest winner, Damir Archer, and his teacher at Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary-Middle School, Kenneth Powers.

Welcome, all of you, to "American Black Journal."

- Thank you.

- 21 years of Bookstock, I say that every year when you guys come on, that I can't believe how long we've been doing this, but I really can't believe, 21 years.

- 21 years, and honestly, it's getting bigger and better every year, and the contest that our students participate in, I think, has gotten bigger and better every year too.

- Yeah, yeah.

What, in your mind, is the sort of power of this celebration of media and words and literacy to a district like DPSCD?

- I mean, I think reading is the fundamental building block of all other things.

I mean, the ability to read opens all kinds of doors, right?

Not only can you read information, which increases your knowledge about subjects, but you can read about places that exist that maybe you'd like to visit, and places of the imagination that I think sparks your thinking in different ways, and so, to me, anything that we can do to promote literacy, reading, the love of reading and writing, is a win.

So Bookstock has been a great partner with the Bookstock Contest, but also, we've also partnered to have classes go to Bookstock, and they got Bookstock books, and we're able to pick out books and take those back to their homes.

So I just think all of what's connected to Bookstock is a win, honestly.

- Yeah.

Kenneth, talk about how this contest kind of plays out in the school at Bethune.

- It plays out very well.

It really motivates students to write, and it gets them more engaged.

We had students this year go to the contest too, this year.

The student who was our runner-up is Promise Lewis.

So it's great, you know, it gets the kids engaged, it gets them focused, and also the element of competition.

- Yeah, they like that, I'm sure they like that.

- [Kenneth] Yes, they enjoy that.

- How does this integrate into the curriculum there in terms of how you're teaching kids, not just to read, but of course, to use the language in many different ways, right?

- For sure.

Right now, we're focusing on writing paragraphs and writing essays, so students know that they have to write more than just one sentence, and they use the information from the books, as far as how the author writes, and use it as a model.

So that's, you know- - Yeah, yeah.

- They will.

- So, Damir, tell me about what you wrote last year that won the essay contest.

- I wrote a essay about the book named "Weirdo."

It was about a kid named "Weirdo."

He moved into a new town and a new school, and people was making fun of him because of his name, and his dad name.

- Uh-huh, and so what was it about that story that made you wanna write about it?

- Because it was bullies, and we need less bullies.

We don't need those.

- That's for sure, right?

(chuckles) And so what did you write in your essay?

What did you say about the book?

- When he was getting bullied, a new student came in and helped him get popular and fit in.

- Yeah, yeah, so, Damir, tell me about books and how important they are to you, books like "Weirdo."

Do you spend a lot of time reading and thinking about stories?

- No, actually, I was- - No.

(chuckles) I've been paying attention to like, martial arts.

- Ah, yeah, yeah.

- I wanna own my own business and martial arts studios.

- Wow, wow.

So, Alycia, you know, students like Damir are wonderful examples of how something like Bookstock, but also the emphasis on literacy and words and ideas are in the district.

- And you know what, I think Damir's example is a really good one is his passion may not be reading and writing, martial arts and entrepreneurship, but there's still this opportunity to connect with books, write about what you've read, and win a contest, and learn something along the way.

So regardless of if you're going to be an author or not is not really the point.

The point is, reading, reflecting, writing, learning.

And so, I think what Damir shared even about the topic of the book, about bullying and saying, "This is something we need to have less of, in schools and in countries, about how we treat people."

And those are lessons that will, you will take with you.

- They help us through the years.

- That will help you through the years, and so, regardless of what he chooses to do, or the other young people who participate in the contest, or all the young people in our district who read, whatever they do next, whatever they've read stays with them.

- Yeah.

- That's one of the beautiful things about reading.

- It really is.

It is, for me, the most valuable part of school.

The things I remember about school are all about books that we read either in elementary or even in high school.

It really is the powerful kind of spine that goes through everything else.

- Agree, agree.

- Yeah, yeah.

Kenneth, talk about this year's contest, the runner-up, the essay that they did?

- This year runner-up was Promise Lewis.

She wrote about a book that was set during women's suffrage movement, 1920s, and she put herself into it.

She imagined how she would feel she lived during that time period.

And it was good to see how students respond to social issues.

- Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's a pretty complicated set of ideas for an elementary school student to put down on paper and into an essay.

Is that a reflection of the way that you're trying to get the students there to think about, not just reading, but how to use the language in bigger ways?

- Yes, I'm trying to get students to write paragraphs.

On our M-STEP test, they have to write an essay and have to learn how to write more than one paragraph and getting their ideas out, you know, and this is great, this is great for that.

- Yeah, yeah.

Alycia, we've been working for a really long time in Detroit on literacy in particular, not just, and I always wanna emphasize this, not just reading scores, right?

- That's right.

- That's one measure, but, again, the way students integrate the language into every part of school, but also in every part of their lives is the goal.

And we've made some real progress, I feel, in the last decade or so, for sure.

- Definitely making progress.

There's a lot more work to do.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- But I would definitely say we've made some progress.

I think your distinction around, you know, test scores versus actually being able to read, two different things.

- [Stephen] Yes.

- Tests do not, you know, measure your ability to read.

It's an assessment of how you answered these questions, and so I think it is important to make that distinction.

When we're trying, you know, from pre-K all the way up through high school, trying to integrate, basically, pieces of literature that are of interest, so trying to look at what books, what articles, what pieces would be more interesting for young people to read, looking at different genres.

A few years ago, we revamped the curriculum completely, and I think some of those changes have really had a positive impact in the classroom, and we continue to work.

There's a lot of work to be done, not just in Detroit Public Schools, but in the City of Detroit, State of Michigan, our country, around really moving towards proficiency.

- Yeah.

- In reading and learning.

Really, I mean, just be a lifelong learner, right?

- Right.

- But we want to inspire young people, that when they leave Detroit Public Schools, they read whatever they want to the rest of their lives and continue to learn.

- Yeah, and we've changed the way, in the district, that we're teaching reading in the last decade, is that right?

- There have been some significant changes.

I think one of the biggest changes is actually around reading intervention and the hiring of academic interventionists and a program called Orton-Gillingham, which is really around working with young people who are having challenges deciphering and understanding what they're reading, and giving them really effective strategies, and we have seen some movement in that space too.

- Congratulations again on the essay that you wrote last year, and, of course, congratulations on 21 years- - 21 years.

- of Bookstock, yeah.

All right, that's gonna do it for us this week.

You can find out more about our guests at americanblackjournal.org, and you can connect with us anytime on social media.

Take care, and we'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] From Delta faucets to Behr Paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

- [Announcer] Support also provided by the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Announcer] DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan-focused giving, we support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Learn more at DTEFoundation.com.

- [Announcer] Also brought to you by Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

Thank you.

(bright music)